> Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycle where the free has been a threat to the commercial products.

This is hilariously out of touch. Software is one of the very few industries where marginal costs of production are essentially zero. Almost everything else besides oft-derided ‘content’ requires the expenditure of variable costs (materials, energy, labour) to produce. It’s well-known that in the limit of a perfect competition environment (think scissors, white t-shirts, socks, pencils, plate glass, & cetera) sales price is driven down towards the marginal cost (variable costs) of the most efficient producer, eliminating profit.

Very few other categories of things have seen their sales prices be driven towards actual zero. In fact I’m hard-pressed to think of any.